


The Long Way Round

by andchaos



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-War, basically just their entire timeline okay, non-graphic narrative of bucky in hydra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:52:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s the first time.<br/>- - -<br/>Here’s the catch: It’s not the last time.</p><p>There’s a second, and a third, and a fourth, and it goes on and on and on, like waves crashing to shore. Bucky gets this once a year; once every two or three. And he loves Steve with everything he has, the whole time, and he’s drunk, no he’s just tired, no he’s just gone without for a little too long, it doesn’t mean anything, it can’t happen again, Steve, fuck.</p><p>It’s a bad idea, it’s a worse idea, it’s the worst idea—Bucky takes and he takes and he doesn’t know when he’ll stop. He’s not sure he ever will.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>AKA the one where they’ve loved each other this whole time, but they kept hurting each other anyway.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Way Round

**Author's Note:**

> me: makes you hum Cups the whole time
> 
> ANYWAY. this is basically me, imagining their whole sad story if they had been banging since the 30s. so, their whole sad story. happy ending though!
> 
> enjoy xoxox

          It’s a dark night and Brooklyn is loud as ever. The stars are bright shining in through the bedroom window. Bucky Barnes is lying in his bed.

          Steve Rogers is panting on top of him.

          “ _Christ_ ,” says Bucky.

          When he isn’t met with a response, he pushes lightly at Steve’s arm. Steve doesn’t move at first, but before Bucky can start to worry too badly that they messed with Steve’s asthma or his heart or something, Steve grunts something unintelligible and rolls over onto the other side of the dingy double mattress.

          Bucky wants to say something else, but he can’t really think of anything smart to say since his brain is just on a repeat reel of all the best curse words in his arsenal. He goes back to panting instead, keeping it in time with Steve’s slowly steadying breaths until they’re both breathing normal again. Bucky rolls his head to the side, a smarmy grin fixed firmly in place, but before he can say anything, he once again stops himself.

          Steve isn’t looking at him. Instead, he’s staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t look anything close to matching Bucky’s mood. It’s a bit of an abrupt stop to the way Bucky’s stomach is feeling like he just skyrocketed twenty stories in the span of a few seconds. Then, as he looks at the delicate lines of Steve’s face—but no, delicate is the wrong word. Steve’s small, sure, but he’s wiry; resilient. Nothing in him is delicate. Bucky’s heart catches in his throat.

          And Steve still isn’t saying anything. For a long moment, Bucky almost wonders if he’s gone to sleep or something—but no, that’s not right either. His eyes are open, just not looking at _him_. They’re tracing the lines and cracks and stains on their ceiling, lingering over the spot where the upstairs apartment’s toilet keeps leaking, where Bucky is pretty sure it’s going to splinter open every day and crash through. He keeps meaning to get to it. He will, sooner or later.

          He almost says Steve’s name.

          Bucky is—well, he’s _wondering_ , mostly. Why Steve isn’t looking at him; why Steve doesn’t seem happy. Why Steve is looking at him—not looking at him—like it’s all some crazy fucking _mistake_. The twenty stories in Bucky’s stomach begins to fall out from under him, easy as breathing.

          Steve doesn’t have a lot going for him, socially. Bucky’s in love with him—has been for a couple years—but it’s not, like, _news_ to him. Steve’s bad with girls; Steve’s bad with bullies; Steve’s bad with most everybody who he doesn’t think does the right thing, and a _lot_ of people don’t seem to do the right thing. Hell, Bucky doesn’t do the right thing some of the time, but Steve’s still—

          Not looking at him.

          Bucky’s insides hit the asphalt with a big fat _splat_.

          Bucky already knows he isn’t really good enough for Steve. But he still barged into their kitchen and kissed him, and he still heard Steve say, “For fuck’s sake, _finally_ ,” and he still totally just rocked his world a few minutes ago (Bucky is a lot of things, but modest isn’t one of them).

          But the fact remains that he isn’t good enough. He feels, distantly, and only sometimes, that their friendship is some big stroke of luck that he had been dumb enough to walk into. And now, because he was an idiot who couldn’t just internalize his feelings like the best of them, Steve might just walk back _out_. He deserves better than what Bucky could give him. Maybe not in another life, if they were different people, but two guys with their sensibilities and their tendencies don’t just get the whole pretty picture that Steve deserves. And even though Bucky knows it’s not his choice to make for him, the fact remains (firmly, in his asphalt-splattered head) that just because they both like each other doesn’t mean they don’t both like girls too, so maybe— _maybe_ Bucky can just forget about ruining Steve’s life just because Bucky has _wants_ that he’s too dumb to shove away in a locked drawer in his head. Steve never even said he _wanted_ that with him. Bucky just—Bucky just took.

          Well. He messed up once. That doesn’t mean he can’t fix it.

          So he says, “Steve,” all gruffly, the way he does when he wants to make a point but Steve’s being too thickheaded to just agree, and Steve looks over at him finally. His brow is pinched and for once, Bucky has absolutely no idea what he’s thinking. Probably about what a big fucking mistake this all was.

          “What’s up?” says Steve, in a tone that, in Bucky’s opinion, is entirely too casual for somebody who did what they just did and is okay about it. More like he’s freaking out under the surface. Whatever.

          So Bucky, brain a little cooked from how long the sun’s been beating down on its splattered remains that have gone everywhere on that asphalt by now, says, “This can _never_ happen again.”

          Then he grabs his clothes and, even though it’s his room and his bed and his Steve, he walks right out without looking back. The door shuts behind him with a kind of ringing finality, and Bucky sleeps on the couch that night, wondering over how quickly it all turned sour.

 

 

          That’s the first time.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          Here’s the catch: It’s not the last time.

          There’s a second, and a third, and a fourth, and it goes on and on and on, like waves crashing to shore. Eroding, replenishing, destroying, rejuvenating. Bucky gets this once a year; once every two or three; he goes for four months without it before they come back to one another again, and then another four years with his hand up girls’ skirts instead. The heat that explodes in his gut every single time—the entire time—when he stumbles back to Steve is enough. Or it’s not enough but he’ll take it, because it’s all he’s got. And he loves Steve with everything he has, the whole time, and he’s drunk, no he’s just tired, no he’s just gone without for a little too long, it doesn’t mean anything, it _can’t_ happen again, Steve, fuck.

          It’s a bad idea, it’s a worse idea, it’s the worst idea—Bucky takes and he takes and he doesn’t know when he’ll stop. He’s not sure he ever will.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          It’s a warm day and Germany fucking _sucks_. Possibly that’s the war, though.

          Bucky wonders how there can be snow on the ground when the sun is still making him sweat this bad. He wipes his brow with one hand and sits down heavily in the back of the truck. The jostling of the vehicle over the uneven ground makes him bump shoulders with Steve every few seconds, because he’s sitting right next to him and neither of them have buckles back here. Bucky’s not really sure he would use one even if there were, but he would have liked the option.

          “Christ,” he says. Steve looks up. “That’s…probably the longest-ever time that one person has ever spent shooting at me without stoppin’.”

          Steve looks down at his hands, twisting on his lap, but Bucky sees the ghost of a smile floating, just hovering, over his lips.

          “It’s not funny,” Steve says quietly. Bucky bumps his shoulder deliberately and when Steve looks up, his smile melts into a real one. He rolls his eyes. “It’s _not_ funny.”

          “’Course it’s not funny, Captain,” Dugan says from the other side of the truck bed. “But shit, you think we made it this far by _coping_? Pshaw.”

          “We’ll have time to cope when we all go crazy back home. Living on the street leaves _plenty_ of time for coping,” Jones agrees from beside him.

          Steve’s smile gets a little more chagrined when he says, “I’m not letting any of you live on the streets.”

          From inside the truck, Morita calls from the driver’s seat, “Just try and stop me, Cap!”

          Steve rolls his eyes as they all start laughing. Bucky elbows him until he starts smiling for real again.

 

          When they get back to camp, Falsworth and Dernier come out of the tent to greet them. Dugan, Jones, and Morita immediately fold them in hugs that involve a lot of back-slapping and chortling, but Bucky and Steve are more pulled into the embraces than they are participating in them. Sure, Bucky’s thrilled to be _alive_ , to be back with his team, but he’s _tired_. He always wants to sleep for about five hundred years after a mission. Steve’s got supersoldier serum churning in his blood, but he looks just about the same as Bucky feels.

          “I gotta get our Captain to bed,” Bucky says loudly to the others. He claps Steve on the shoulder, and they all laugh and tease them both about being worn out old men.

          “All this time and he still babies me,” Steve says, tipping his head towards the others. “Tell your ladies to take notes.”

          It’s just a joke—they’re all laughing—but Bucky’s heart gets all twisted up, like he can’t breathe or something even though he’s _fine_. He forces a laugh with them and ducks down into their bunk as soon as he can.

          He can still hear them through the tent flap, laughing with one another and ribbing each other, but it’s quiet inside. He and Steve are lying on their sides, not doing much, just looking at each other. He feels like he should say something, so he does. It’s never been complicated with Steve.

          “You were a bit rusty on the mission today,” he says, rolling over onto his back. He does it the wrong way so he’s all pressed up along Steve’s side now, and even though he’s not looking at him anymore he can feel him all on his arm, on his thigh, everywhere.

          Beside him, he hears Steve huff a laugh.

          “Yeah _right_. You’re the one getting old, old man. When we stopped for drinks on the way back, you didn’t even have _one_. What’s wrong? ‘Fraid you can’t take the heat anymore?”

          Bucky snorts. “Yeah right,” he echoes. “Did you see those girls running around outside the liquor store? I was too busy thinking about them to deal with you cotton-headed assholes and your penchant for vodka, of all the goddamn things.”

          Steve sighs. “Yeah, they were pretty, huh?”

          “First time we even so much as caught sight of a woman in four months, so yeah. They were the finest women I ever laid eyes on.”

          Steve pokes his arm, and Bucky finally tears his eyes away from the top of the tent to look over at him with a lazy grin.

          “Gonna ditch us all to go chase skirts?” Steve asks. He’s smiling too.

          “Just might,” says Bucky. “You got Carter calling you every other day. I haven’t even heard a woman’s voice in God knows how long. I’m gettin’ antsy.”

          “You always did like a pick-me-up when you got jittery,” Steve says fondly. But they’re close and his eyes are wide and he looks a little less like his Captain and a little more like his—Steve. Like Steve.

          Bucky smirks anyway. He doesn’t take his eyes off of him.

          “Damn right. A good girl can take your mind off things like nothin’ else on this earth.”

          “Or a bad one,” says Steve, and Bucky snorts his amusement.

          They’re looking at each other for a long moment—a moment too long, and the conversation stalls. Another moment, and another. Bucky realizes his eyes have gotten as wide as Steve’s. He can’t hear Steve breathing anymore—did he stop? Or did Bucky just start breathing too loud for him to notice?—and he doesn’t know this body, not really, not as well as he knew Steve… _before_.

          Steve says, “Bucky—”

          And Bucky gasps, “Aw, shit, Stevie—” and he’s gone, he’s gone, he never left.

          He rolls over on top of Steve—and he never used to do that, because Steve was this tiny little thing and Bucky _worries_ —and Steve grabs his hips with his new, big hands, and Bucky’s a sloppy fucking kisser when they start out because he’s kissed a lot of people but this is almost like it’s new and also not like that at all.

          Steve has this amazing grip on Bucky’s hair the whole time, and Bucky leaves shallow marks on his neck that will fade by morning. For an hour it’s just theirs. Just Steve with his hands on Bucky’s hips, helping him rock and rock down on him, maybe sliding up under his shirt to drag down his ribs or touch his chest. Just Bucky with his hand around them both, muffling cries into Steve’s neck, his collarbone, his mouth. When it’s at its peak, they kiss their way through it, and Steve’s tongue is too heavy in his mouth to let much sound out at all. He comes down just as quiet, but his heart won’t stop pounding and pounding away.

          When it’s over, he stays a moment too long before Steve shifts him off his lap. Bucky rolls over without a word. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say; he can feel Steve’s eyes on him as his own trace the faded beige canvas of their tent. Suddenly he feels like his stomach dropped down to the floor, dropped all the way through time to land on hot pavement again.

          He doesn’t look up when Steve sits. Not when he sighs. Not when he says, “Nearly dinnertime.” And not when he goes.

 

          Dinner is pretty fucking miserable. It’s started to rain, which will at least wash out some of the surrounding snow, except they won’t be here much longer so it doesn’t fucking _matter_. Bucky mopes a lot and picks at his can of beans with a fork, and he doesn’t look at anyone really, but he especially doesn’t look at Steve.

          They’re all crowded around the fire having an alright time after they’re done eating, but Bucky’s been chewing slowly and still has some of his dinner left. His appetite’s mostly gone, which is messed up because he’s barely eaten the past couple days what with being out on missions and all. He knows he has to build his strength to keep going though, so he’s still poking at it and hoping it will somehow transform into something appetizing, which it doesn’t.

          He still hasn’t finished when Steve stands up. He doesn’t really command them all to bed straight away, but he makes it real clear that he’s going and that he advises them all to do the same sometime soon.

          “Get a good night’s sleep, men,” Steve calls, his voice that baritone that Bucky still doesn’t recognize, and with that authoritative ring that he does. “We ship back out tomorrow. Don’t expect another warm day like this one. We’re hitting the mountains; it’s gonna get _cold_. Rest up.”

          Then he dismisses them all and goes back into the tent while Bucky just sits there and sort of picks at his beans, because he doesn’t want to go see Steve right now, not sure he can look him in the eye. For once in their long lives together, he has nothing to say—nothing that will mean anything anyway. He’s tired but he can’t be the first one to head to bed right after Steve. He already knows that the others talk; it’s a small group of them after all, they were bound to notice. And he doesn’t _care_. It’s not like any of them would _say_ anything. It’s not like anyone would try anything. It’s all just talk.

          It’s just—it used to be like this: Steve was small but bound for great things, and Bucky was carefree and bound to gallivant around the city for the rest of his life. They caught a few moments together, and Steve always sounded so—so—like he _wanted_ it to be that way, forever and ever, for as long as they could stretch the moment before they both realized that forever was about as long as it took for the sun to come up.

          Now it’s like this: Steve is big and an international hero, and Bucky is tired and just wants to see his city again, alive and bright and calling his name. Steve sees his future and he doesn’t realize that Bucky doesn’t really fit inside it, not anymore, and Bucky just—he just can’t lie and pretend that he sees himself in the front seat of Steve’s Romero or Jalopy or whatever fancy-ass car he bought to fit his fancy-ass title, because he _doesn’t belong there_. Just because Bucky wants something doesn’t mean it _fits_. He never does.

          He waits until Falsworth and Jones both head inside before he puts his half-finished dinner down and follows them. He makes sure there’s at least one person in between him and Steve as he settles in, which he doesn’t normally do, and he can tell the difference—it’s not Steve’s smell, it’s not Steve’s warmth, it’s not _Steve_. It takes him a long time to get to sleep.

 

 

          That’s the last time.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          Here’s the catch: That’s the last time _this_ _century_.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          1945: Bucky wakes up and he’s in a tube and something is peeling at his brain. He was dead, he was dead, he is dead. He can’t move and he can’t see and he can’t _breathe_ , but his brain hurts, his brain hurts—

          Bucky starts to scream.

 

          1951: Bucky wakes up and he’s panting except he’s not panting because there’s something in his mouth. He bites down hard on it, but it just seems to be made of rubber.

          He looks up and there are people standing all around, people he doesn’t recognize. The people around him are wearing lab coats, except some of them aren’t, and he doesn’t know _any_ of them. A couple have clipboards, while others are talking in low voices to one another, and some are just standing around and looking at him, which may be the weirdest thing.

          One of them gets closer, his arms crossed behind his back and his brow furrowed as he peers at Bucky’s face more closely. Bucky’s attention is darting all around the room—where the hell _is he_?—but when the man looks into his eyes, Bucky’s gaze stutters and rests on him.

          The man snaps his fingers, and somebody takes the gag out of his mouth.

          “Mission report?” the man says.

          Bucky pauses. _What the fuck?_

          The man looks a little irritated. “ _Mission report_?” he repeats, sharper this time.

          Bucky narrows his eyes. And then he spits right in the guy’s face.

          A second later there are innumerable hands holding him down and something getting lowered over his face and Bucky is screaming, _“Steve! Steve! Steve!”_ —which, who the fuck is Steve?—and there is no one there to help him.

 

          1959: Bucky wakes up and he doesn’t know where he is but he _remembers_. He remembers things that aren’t things, that didn’t happen, that couldn’t have happened. He remembers battlefields and masks and blood dripping down his hands.

          His hands…

          The thought makes him look down, as much as he can. The light is faded and old wherever he is, everything filtered through strangely, and he can only really flick his eyes downwards because he can’t move his head at all. He sees his right hand—is it more calloused? More rough? He tries and fails to shake his tethered head. He sees his left hand—he sees metal.

          Bucky takes a deep breath. He pauses, processes, _remembers_.

          Bucky starts to scream.

 

          1962: Bucky wakes up—

 

          1973: Bucky wakes up—

 

          1987: Bucky wakes up—

 

          1999: Bucky wakes up—

 

          2007: Bucky—

 

          2014: Bucky starts to scream.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          “What’s…I mean, how long will it take to stop what’s…what’s wrong with him?”

          Bucky can’t even find the strength to lift his head and seek out whoever’s talking, let alone remind them that there’s nothing _wrong_ with him, god damn it. So there are a few screws loose. It’s not like it matters. They can deprogram him, and it will all be okay. That’s the whole reason they woke him up in the first place. That’s what he told them to do before he let T’Challa’s team of doctors put him under, anyway, so he’s going to be real pissed off if they woke him up before they found a way to fix him.

          After awhile, the chattering voices go away. Bucky thinks he recognizes one of them, that first one, but they’re all gone before he can put it together. He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

 

          People think cryo means resting, but it doesn’t. Bucky’s tired for days after they wake him up, and really fucking confused, and it’s nearly a week before he lets the blond one— _Steve_ , his brain supplies him out of nowhere, _Steve_ —lift him out of his bed with his only arm slung around his neck. He takes him on daily walks down the hall. Bucky thought the babying would annoy him, since he never got recuperation time when he was being tossed in and out of cryo nonstop for seventy years, but he doesn’t really mind it. He doesn’t exactly remember the _why_ , but he knows the big blond one reminds him of a feeling he can only classify as: _home_.

          So he stays in bed and lets Steve walk him around the Wakanda base for a few weeks.

          Slowly, his memories start coming back. It happens in fits and starts, and sometimes with triggers that only relinquish a few of his memories at a time and sometimes without triggers and it’s a flood, but Bucky doesn’t mind. Sometimes he’s frustrated, because he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be a lot of the time and he still wakes up every other morning trying to kill everyone on his floor, but most of the time it’s okay. Steve keeps telling him to give himself a break, and for some reason Bucky really wants to believe him. So he lets himself.

          Bucky rests, and recuperates, and gets back the pieces of himself in starts and leaps and crawls and bounds.

 

          He’s three months into his deprogramming (“Recuperation,” his king-appointed therapist chides in his head, “thinking of it that way will only heighten your dysphoria when you’re triggered.” But Bucky just hates the anxiety attacks he gets from hearing any one of HYDRA’s ten words, although he guesses it’s better than going to sleep and waking up to find he’s leveled another government.) when he wakes up one morning and thinks: _Christ_.

          He’s up and running before he can think twice.

          The hallways rush by him as he crosses them in wide strides, and he’s a little lost because he’s never really been outside of his wing before. Each open door he passes looks like something else: Through that one he can see himself sitting against their old couch in Brooklyn while Steve strokes his hair from above; through that one he can see himself drunk and nearly passed out on Steve’s bed while Steve draws him serenely from a chair across the room; that’s him coming home to find Steve cooking a huge plate of this fancy pasta they splurged on once after finding some money lost in the gutter; that’s him scooping Steve up in his arms and spinning him a wide circle in their living room, euphoria etched into every line of their young faces. He passes ten doors, then twenty—he gets lost, doubles back, passes a few more again. His heart feels light, but like it’s in his throat at the same time. He feels like he’s running on hot asphalt.

          Finally he finds the room that he’s looking for.

          Steve’s seated across the wide floor from him, flicking through news channels. A couple of T’Challa’s trusted friends are sitting on the couch with him. They’re talking softly amongst themselves, but all look up when Bucky bursts in and says in a great rush of breath, “Steve.”

          Steve looks up. Bucky is panting, and Steve must notice the rapid rise-and-fall of his chest because he immediately stands and swings himself over the back of the couch.

          “Bucky—are you al—”

          “I just remembered something, Stevie,” he says, and he’s launched into motion now, striding fast across the room.

          Steve says, “What did you remem—”

          Then they’re within arms’ reach of one another and it doesn’t matter what he was about to say, because Bucky’s heart is screaming in his head and it’s so loud that it’s blocking his ears out anyway. The group of women are still on the couch, and distantly he knows that they’re looking at them, but it doesn’t matter because Steve’s here and Bucky’s here and he knows, he knows.

          One step more. Two.

          He’s close enough to touch.

          Bucky lays his hands on either side of Steve’s face and brings his mouth down to his.

          At once, city lights burst alight inside his chest. His heart beats against Steve’s. _One, two, three, four_. Like cars honking in the distant street. Like dirt under his running feet. Like home barreling into his open arms. _One, two, three, four_. Four lifetimes rush by in a blink. Steve’s hands are on his waist.

          At last, he lets Steve go. Bucky can’t breathe. His heart is singing. Steve’s eyes are wide and awed and he doesn’t say anything at all.

          Bucky breathes, “I remembered that I love you.”

          And he kisses him again.

 

 

          That’s the first time this century.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

          Here’s the beautiful part: It’s not the last.

**Author's Note:**

> [find me at my usual haunt](http://bkinney.tumblr.com/post/144705573255)


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